When I used to interview job applicants, I’d ask them if they know what IPTV is.

"It’s television over IP,” they’d reply. "You know, Internet television."

"It is not," I’d snarl. "It’s the telcos getting into television. TV over phone lines. AT&T and Verizon, and those hundreds of rural telcos, too.”

Of  course, they’d never get the job.

Well, my reply would also get me the boot at any online video company.

Yes, IPTV is about those telcos taking on the cable and satellite companies. But it’s really about how video is becoming platform-independent. The video on your broadband will soon become the same video on your TV and your mobile phone.

That fact was made dramatically clear at last week’s IPTV World conference at NAB 2007 by the presence of a Revver executive on the opening panel, "Battle for Eyeballs”.

Revver, a user-generated video site, has a deal with Verizon to supply video to both its Fios IPTV and Vcast mobile services.

Its content also plays on Jack Black’s experimental Acceptable.tv TV show on VH1. Watchers get to vote on just how acceptable that content is via cellphones or the Internet.

How cool is that? Think that qualifies as IPTV?

Thinking of video is something that’s passively watched on a clunky TV is passe. It’s time for me to get with the program.

See Also

• IPTV World video coverage
• Verizon to Offer Revver Clips on FiOS TV
• IPTV World conference

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When I first bought my Treo 700P, I watched advertisements for shows like "Prison Break" and "Lost" all the time. I showed music videos to my children and ate up the movie previews.

That took a week. Then I stopped. I never bought anything.

This could just be my boring 47-year-old demographic, but I think it’s a function of not having really compelling stuff to watch or a platform that makes sense.

On today’s MoTV opening panel at NAB in Las Vegas, I heard a vision that makes sense. True mobile television, now being launched by Verizon, has the potential to snag users if it includes hard drives robust enough for PVR functionality.

Consider this scenario: You start watching "The Sopranos" on your PVR at home. You finish watching it on your phone at the subway.

"Having that kind of PVR capability is one of the ways carriers can increase revenue," observed Scott Wills, president and COO of Aloha Partners’ Hiwire, which is launching its own mobile television service.

This kind of capability is exactly what’s needed to make mobile television a mass market. And, by the panelists’ estimate, it will become a reality for millions in the U.S. over the next two to five years.

See Also

• Aloha joins mobile-TV game via Hiwire.
• Qualcomm CEO Jacobs Keynotes MoTV

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I wrote a blog a few weeks back entitled "The Fifth Estate" that said citizen journalists deserve to be the "Fifth Estate" behind the executive branch, Congress, the courts and "real" reporters. That’s because these citizen bloggers — or cloggers, as I termed them — have an increasingly important role in restraining errant members of the other four branches.

Well, so it is. Bloggers played a critical role in bringing about Don Imus’ well-deserved demise as a radio host at CBS.

A 26-year-old researcher for the liberal watchdog organization Media Matters for America was among the first to blog about Imus’ Wednesday morning reference to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as "nappy-headed hos”.

This relatively obscure group attracted dozens of heated comments to its postings of transcripts of the address on its website. But the major news outlets published nothing at all, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The National Association of Black Journalists and other individuals and groups added their voices to the "digital brush fire" that brought Imus down.

CBS, which Thursday merely suspended Imus for two weeks before firing him on Friday, did not ultimately fire him for making racially charged remarks.  The network, MSNBC, syndicators and other members of the media elite profited handsomely from his misogynous and racist comments over the years.

Advertisers didn’t drop out because they were disgusted, either.  They put up with his trash as long as they hit millions of demographic desirables.  

CBS and advertisers deserted Imus because of 3,435 enraged cloggers, by Google’s last count. 

And lest you grieve too much for Imus: how much do you want to bet he pops up on XM/Sirius or some other media outlet more concerned with profits than propriety?

Irony Dept.: Conservative talk show host Doug McIntyre of L.A.’s KABC remarked to the L.A. Times  with an apparently straight face that, "free speech was imperiled if ‘a joke — a lame, idiotic, stupid joke’ could get Imus fired".  Imus was fired by the public, not by CBS, Doug.  I do believe they get a vote in what garbage they listen to.

See Also

• The Fifth Estate
• Behind the Fall of Imus, a Digital Brush Fire
• Imus’ End May Be a Hopeful Sign
• Rice Calls Imus Remarks `Disgusting’
• Some Conservative Talk Show Hosts Angered by Imus’ Firing

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Let’s see.  It’s been a hard day at work and I head home for dinner, a Bud and Bud.TV.

I don’t think so.  And apparently neither do the 100,000 other people who bailed out of Bud.TV’s struggling online network, one month after it launched with an underwhelming 253,000 visitors in February. Anheuser-Busch is said to have spent between $20 million and $30 million to launch the site, and hopes to have 2 to 3 million visitors a month by early next year.

AdAge.com opines that the 40% drop in traffic at Anheuser-Busch’s site is due to the online form on the launch page, which verifies your name, age, zip code and gives you a user name and a password.  That’s silly.  People fill out oodles more to sign up for free MySpace or Amazon accounts.  It took me five minutes to fill out Ad Age’s own online reg form — and they made me fill in my address, company, job title and check a box not to receive the magazine’s email propaganda.

There are two reasons why people aren’t going to Bud.TV.  One is tepid content.  A hackneyed show about fake celebrities, interviews with Sports Illustrated swimsuit models and a "Bud Light daredevil" who orders pizzas using only the words "large" and "yes," is not exactly compelling content.

But the more important reason why the site is bombing is that people just don’t want to watch a TV channel run by a beer company.  Especially when it features the same kind of beery spots you see in Bud Light commercials.

Imagine if NBC started selling beer in grocery stores.  You think that would sell?

Advertisers are advertisers for a reason.  It’s because they need to bounce off content consumers really want to see to get their attention.

Now, you could argue that a few advertisers really are in the content business, say BMW Films.  But they’re really not.  BMW’s critically acclaimed Internet short film series featured the work of famous directors like John Woo, Ridley Scott and John Frankenheimer.  BMW wrapped itself in their notoriety, the way any good advertiser does.  But it didn’t produce the films.

Had Bud done its site that way, leaving the programming to programmers, Bud.TV might have had a chance.  As it is, I predict it will end its life as a mere belch in the history of Internet programming.

See Also

• Traffic Plummets at Struggling Bud.TV
• Beer Site Hobbled by Barriers to Easy Access and Shareable Content

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Most of you are probably too young to remember when Terry Semel and Robert Daly were co-presidents of Warner Bros., running the studio through perhaps the longest winning streak in Hollywood history.

Yes, running Yahoo! is a second vocation for Daly.  Unlike Google chiefs Sergei Brin and Lawrence Page, who cut their business teeth on search engine technology at Stanford.

Daly’s Hollywood contacts and savvy undoubtedly played a big role in Yahoo and Viacom’s joint announcement today that Yahoo would be the exclusive provider of search ads at MTV.com, Nickelodeon.com and other Viacom sites.

If you wonder how Yahoo! will survive Google’s onslaught, that’s it in a nutshell.  Yahoo is a media company.  Google is a fancy search engine.

The famously incestuous world of Hollywood doesn’t do well with outsiders — whether they’re named Google or Microsoft.  Look for a lot more Hollywood deals in Yahoo’s future.

See Also

• Yahoo Provides Search Ads for Viacom web sites
• Terry Semel Bio

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Chicago real estate tycoon Sam Zell — flush from buying Tribune Co. — made a fascinating hint yesterday in a Bay Area speech.

"If all the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content for nothing, what would Google do, and how profitable would Google be?" he’s quoted by the Tribune-owned L.A. Times as saying.

Now remove the word "newspapers" from his statement and insert "record companies" or "TV programmers". See why it’s fascinating?

Google, of course, would never outright steal music or TV programs from their august owners. But if pirated music videos end up on YouTube, hey, that’s showbiz.

Now, on to newspapers. So far, the Fourth Estate has made nary a peep about Google getting all that good news copy for free. Nor has it filed suit, like Viacom did last month against YouTube to punish it for letting users upload clips from The Colbert Report, South Park and other Viacom-owned material.

Could Zell, the consummate dealmaker, be considering a middle course? One that let’s him have his cake and eat some of Google’s, too?

Let’s suppose Zell went to Google and said, "Look, guys. It’s been a good run. But we’re being eaten alive. You need to cough up some of the revenue you’re taking from all those little ads on the side of the L.A. Times stories in Google searches.”

And he might just cough politely and mutter "Viacom" under his breath. They’re smart in Silicon Valley. They know a veiled threat when they hear one.

Google, in its own way, is a content pipe –just as T-Mobile and Vodafone are content pipes for the dozens of so-called "off deck” companies who use mobile operators’ air waves to sell everything from sex to silk slippers.

Except T-Mobile and Vodafone are smart enough to recognize a paradigm shift when they see one. They make those off-deck companies pay freight. And they make a fortune in the process.

So I’ll be fascinated to find out if Zell was indeed hinting at  a middle path for reinvigorating newspapers. Google him in a few months and check it out. That’s what I did.

See Also

• Papers, Web firms need ‘a new deal,’ Zell says
• Can rich Americans save newspapers?
• Is Google Too Powerful?

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I doubt Google is going to become a huge force in conventional TV advertising anytime soon. Consider that the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, which represents most major cable companies, just pulled out of eBay’s own online brokering system.

But if you focus on just this Old Media aspect of Google’s entry into TV advertising, you’re missing the point.

The key in Google’s deal with Dish Network is (shudder) convergence. You know, that TV-turning-into-a-PC thing that’s gotten a bad rap lately because, hey, who wants to watch TV on their computer?

In an IPTV world, interactivity becomes standard and a growing number of features — GUIs, video-on-demand and, yes, search — begin to look an awful lot like PCs. At some point, they just become different iterations of the same device for office and home.

That’s what Google is preparing for. When the old passive advertising model dies its well-deserved death, Google wants AdSense (or its TV equivalent) to be plastered on every television cum PC. Just as Google wants to have Google Mobile plastered on every cellphone.

And the sum is greater than the parts. An advertiser who finds their message on computer, mobile and TV really gets consumers where they live.

The idea of Google brokering impersonal advertising transactions for people like GM and Absolut is ludicrous. Those multi-million-dollar deals are cut on boardroom tables, not websites.

But if you’re talking about TV watchers clicking on little bail bond ads in the corner of "Prison Break” episodes, you’re (sadly) a lot closer to the truth.

See Also

• Cable-TV Group Bails Out of EBay Ad Sales Trial
• Google’s Revolution May Not Be Televised

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So Steve Jobs gets his way and http://www.emi.com becomes the first major label to ditch copy-protection software. Other record labels are expected follow suit. Music fans will get to burn as many tracks as they want and get the added bonus of near-CD quality sound files. Paid music downloads soar. And everyone wins.

Well, yes. Except for the "everyone wins" part.

Apple certainly wins. It sells a lot more iPods. Fans win. But music labels only lose less.

If you’re an amoral fan who has a choice between paying for a pristine, 256kps, copy-protection-free file from iTunes or downloading it for free from your favorite pirate site or friend’s computer, what are you going to do?

You’ll do what 1 billion illegal song downloads a month say you’re going to do. You’re not going to pay.

Sure, some people will pay. I will. Maybe you will, too. Probably more people in the world will pay.  But most people won’t.

Which means that the "sea change" in music buying habits that some media outlets are already predicting isn’t going to happen. Or at least, not enough to stem the steady erosion in the music industry’s business.

The sea change has already occurred. Fans realize they don’t need to pay for albums.  There’s no going back.

The real sea change will occur when record labels — not Apple — come up with a fundamentally new paradigm for monetizing music. I detailed a few pet ideas in last week’s column, "When Will They Ever Learn?"  I may be wrong about my ideas. But I’ll bet you it’s not going to be "pay per download" that rescues the record industry, either.

See Also

• EMI, Apple strike deal to sell songs online free from copying restrictions

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